The "Self and the "Other" in a Cinematic Experience

Cinema as an object of viewership involves the interplay of various intellectual and psychological processes that make it possible to experience an entire narrative within a limited temporal and spatial context. The main purpose of this paper is to examine, assimilative and contradictory forces that are at work, during the process of viewership and whether the audience actively experiences, alternating states of identification and alienation, through the process of projection and introjection. Drawing from Kleinian concepts of 'projective identification' and Sartre's 'transcendence of the ego', the paper explores the creation of the significant 'other' during viewership and how the 'other' and the 'self' are integrated into the all encompassing ego identity. Identification does not require the 'other' to be familiarized and integrated within the self, but may happen during the process of dealing with, controlling and interacting with the other It is through the establishment of identity and resolution of self versus other conflict, that cinema is able to engage its viewers.